The desire to beat gravity is a Buckeye tradition. After all, Orville and Wilbur Wright were Dayton, Ohio, boys who went to Kitty Hawk in 1903 to get things off the ground. When space became the next frontier, John Glenn, who was born in Cambridge, Ohio, on July 18, 1921, became the first American to orbit the earth in his Friendship 7 spacecraft. A Wapakoneta, Ohio, resident, Neil Armstrong, born in 1930, followed in the footsteps of Glenn by being the first human to step onto the moon's surface during the summer of 1969. Don Thomas, a Cleveland native, saw other Ohioans in space and set his sights on becoming an astronaut. After years of hard work and dedication, he became part of the 1995 All-Ohio space shuttle Discovery mission. Orbit of Discovery provides a first-hand account of this mission. Written by Thomas with the assistance of journalist, Mike Bartell, the book is a lively and entertaining must read for individuals who want to experience a ride into space. Orbit of Discovery is augmented with a foreword by astronaut and Senator John Glenn and an introduction by Senator George Voinovich.

Winner of the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize, a breathtaking elegy to the waning days of human spaceflight as we have known it In the 1960s, humans took their first steps away from Earth, and for a time our possibilities in space seemed endless. But in a time of austerity and in the wake of high-profile disasters like Challenger, that dream has ended. In early 2011, Margaret Lazarus Dean traveled to Cape Canaveral for NASA's last three space shuttle launches in order to bear witness to the end of an era. With Dean as our guide to Florida's Space Coast and to the history of NASA, Leaving Orbit takes the measure of what American spaceflight has achieved while reckoning with its earlier witnesses, such as Norman Mailer, Tom Wolfe, and Oriana Fallaci. Along the way, Dean meets NASA workers, astronauts, and space fans, gathering possible answers to the question: What does it mean that a spacefaring nation won't be going to space anymore?

For centuries, a journey to space has been a shared dream of millions around the world. We have patiently, and impatiently, anticipated Sunday afternoon drives down celestial freeways. Yet, since 1961 when human space travel began, fewer than 560 professional astronauts, cosmonauts, taikonauts and a-half dozen millionaires have seen Earth from a vantage point in space. Given so few orbiting travelers, what made so many ordinary people think they had the slightest chance to fulfill their dream? Because for decades, visionaries, government officials, space companies, and the media told us our ticket to ride was just a rocket away. All we had to do was "keep the dream alive." With so much optimism, shouldn't we all be there by now? See You In Orbit? Our Dream of Spaceflight will be the first non-fiction book to take a historical, personal, irreverent, and often-humorous look at the promises, expectations, principal personalities, and milestones regarding the goal and dream we have to fly in space.

The untold story of the historic voyage to the moon that closed out one of our darkest years with a nearly unimaginable triumph In August 1968, NASA made a bold decision: in just sixteen weeks, the United States would launch humankind’s first flight to the moon. Only the year before, three astronauts had burned to death in their spacecraft, and since then the Apollo program had suffered one setback after another. Meanwhile, the Russians were winning the space race, the Cold War was getting hotter by the month, and President Kennedy’s promise to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade seemed sure to be broken. But when Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders were summoned to a secret meeting and told of the dangerous mission, they instantly signed on. Written with all the color and verve of the best narrative non-fiction, Apollo 8 takes us from Mission Control to the astronaut’s homes, from the test labs to the launch pad. The race to prepare an untested rocket for an unprecedented journey paves the way for the hair-raising trip to the moon. Then, on Christmas Eve, a nation that has suffered a horrendous year of assassinations and war is heartened by an inspiring message from the trio of astronauts in lunar orbit. And when the mission is over—after the first view of the far side of the moon, the first earth-rise, and the first re-entry through the earth’s atmosphere following a flight to deep space—the impossible dream of walking on the moon suddenly seems within reach. The full story of Apollo 8 has never been told, and only Jeffrey Kluger—Jim Lovell’s co-author on their bestselling book about Apollo 13—can do it justice. Here is the tale of a mission that was both a calculated risk and a wild crapshoot, a stirring account of how three American heroes forever changed our view of the home planet.

NATIONAL BEST SELLER A stunning, personal memoir from the astronaut and modern-day hero who spent a record-breaking year aboard the International Space Station—a message of hope for the future that will inspire for generations to come. The veteran of four spaceflights and the American record holder for consecutive days spent in space, Scott Kelly has experienced things very few have. Now, he takes us inside a sphere utterly hostile to human life. He describes navigating the extreme challenge of long-term spaceflight, both life-threatening and mundane: the devastating effects on the body; the isolation from everyone he loves and the comforts of Earth; the catastrophic risks of colliding with space junk; and the still more haunting threat of being unable to help should tragedy strike at home--an agonizing situation Kelly faced when, on a previous mission, his twin brother's wife, American Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, was shot while he still had two months in space. Kelly's humanity, compassion, humor, and determination resonate throughout, as he recalls his rough-and-tumble New Jersey childhood and the youthful inspiration that sparked his astounding career, and as he makes clear his belief that Mars will be the next, ultimately challenging, step in spaceflight. In Endurance, we see the triumph of the human imagination, the strength of the human will, and the infinite wonder of the galaxy.

Rare views of the beginnings of a historic space program After the excitement of the first Moon landing, the U.S. space program took an ambitious new direction closer to home: NASA's Space Shuttle program promised frequent access to Earth orbit for medical and scientific breakthroughs; deploying, repairing and maintaining satellites; and assembling a space station. Picturing the Space Shuttle is the first photographic history of the program's early years as the world's first space plane debuted. Showcasing over 450 unpublished and lesser-known images, this book traces the growth of the Space Shuttle from 1965 to 1982, from initial concept through its first four space flights. The photographs offer windows into designing the first reusable space vehicle as well as the construction and testing of the prototype shuttle Enterprise. They also show the factory assembly and delivery of the Space Shuttle Columbia, preparations at the major NASA field centers, and astronaut selection and training. Finally, the book devotes a chapter to each of the first four orbital missions, STS-1 through STS-4, providing an abundance of seldom seen photos for each flight. Mostly selected from J. L. Pickering's personal archive, the world's largest private collection of U.S. human space flight images, the high-quality photographs in this book are paired with veteran journalist John Bisney's detailed descriptions and historical background information. The book also includes images of NASA and Shuttle contractor booklets, manuals, access badges, and press kits, as well as a foreword by Robert Crippen, the pilot of the first Space Shuttle flight. Picturing the Space Shuttle recreates the excitement of an era in which the possibilities of space exploration seemed limitless.

2020 Space Hipsters Prize for Best Book in Astronomy, Space Exploration, or Space History Come Fly with Us is the story of an elite group of space travelers who flew as members of many space shuttle crews from pre-Challenger days to Columbia in 2003. Not part of the regular NASA astronaut corps, these professionals known as "payload specialists" came from a wide variety of backgrounds and were chosen for an equally wide variety of scientific, political, and national security reasons. Melvin Croft and John Youskauskas focus on this special fraternity of spacefarers and their individual reflections on living and working in space. Relatively unknown to the public and often flying only single missions, these payload specialists give the reader an unusual perspective on the experience of human spaceflight. The authors also bring to light NASA's struggle to integrate the wide-ranging personalities and professions of these men and women into the professional astronaut ranks. While Come Fly with Us relates the experiences of the payload specialists up to and including the Challenger tragedy, the authors also detail the later high-profile flights of a select few, including Barbara Morgan, John Glenn (who returned to space at the age of seventy-seven), and Ilan Ramon of Israel aboard Columbia on its final, fatal flight, STS-107.

Selected as a Mission Specialist in 1978 in the first group of shuttle astronauts, Mike Mullane completed three missions and logged 356 hours aboard the Discovery and Atlantis shuttles. It was a dream come true. As a boy, Mullane could only read about space travel in science fiction, but the launch of Sputnik changed all that. Space flight became a possible dream and Mike Mullane set out to make it come true. In this absorbing memoir, Mullane gives the first-ever look into the often hilarious, sometime volatile dynamics of space shuttle astronauts - a class that included Vietnam War veterans, feminists, and propeller-headed scientists. With unprecedented candour, Mullane describes the chilling fear and unparalleled joy of space flight. As his career centred around the Challenger disaster, Mullane also recounts the heartache of burying his friends and colleagues. And he pulls no punches as he reveals the ins and outs of NASA, frank in his criticisms of the agency. A blast from start to finish, Riding Rockets is a straight-from-the-gut account of what it means to be an astronaut, just in time for this latest generation of stargazers.